Is the language used in your company’s job specs discouraging female applicants?

Unconscious bias are sometimes unintentionally communicated in the way job descriptions are written and this can have a negative impact on the diversity of candidates applying for roles writes Caroline Tyler of the Irish Centre for Diversity.

Ireland’s most progressive companies are committed to diversity and inclusion. They truly understand that developing a culture where people from diverse backgrounds feel included enables them to become more engaged, more productive and leads to increased profits.

Increasingly business leaders know that the diversity dividend is real and the case compelling.

Companies Investing in diversity can significantly improve results, as many of the firms we work with can testify, demonstrating performance gains, increased employee satisfaction and retention as well as improved external customer relations.

The evidence from numerous studies and research articles demonstrates just how important it is to tackle gender diversity issues.

Back in 2014, a Credit Suisse Research report highlighted that companies where women make up at least 15% of senior management were 50 %more profitable than those where fewer than 10% of senior managers were female.

So, if you are trying to encourage more women to apply to apply for job vacancies in your company then the first place to start is taking a look at hiring and recruitment strategies, the platform where potential employees get their first glimpse of the company they could be working for and are able to assess its, values, diversity, inclusion and family friendly policies.

Maybe your job adverts contain subtle biases!

Without realising it, we all use language that is subtly ‘gender-coded’, which according to Kat Matfield, who created a gender decoder for job ads, unconscious bias are sometimes unintentionally communicated in the way job descriptions are written and this can have a negative impact on the diversity of candidates applying for roles.

If you want to attract more job candidates, try making the language you use gender-neutral because language is not neutral or used in a vacuum.

Visit our website today to see whether your job advert has the kind of subtle linguistic gender-coding that could have a discouraging effect.

If so, remove the pitfalls, translate the language to gender-neutral, transform your job ads and widen the talent field, surely a win-win for everyone?